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Collaborators, Informers and Secret Service
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
About a year ago I was asked if I would present a paper on the theology of laity to a conference whose title was “Patterns of Priesthood”, and whose purpose was to “attempt to open up the ground for a discussion of the subject of ministry and communion”. The inclusion of a paper on laity seemed to me then, and seems now, both significant and awkward. Primarily it is a phenomenon to be rejoiced at, in that discussions of priesthood and ministry cannot take place without a thoroughly ecclesial sense of the whole people of God. The point is clearly being made that the theology of laity—or “laicology”—is, like the theology of ministry, or of ordained priesthood, just one aspect of ecclesiology; all these subjects are concerned with looking at what it means to be Church, each from its particular angle. In expressing this we are, of course, indebted to the work of Yves Congar; in his substantial work on laity, he stressed that the purpose behind a theology of laity was fundamentally the reworking of ecclesiology and, in particular, the complementing of a dominant “hierarchology”. Following in this tradition we can recognise the complexity of ecclesiology, where studies of priesthood, laity, religious life and so forth are distinctive, but not discrete. Our basic concern, whether we are talking about laity, the ordained, hierarchical structures or charismatic gifts, is always the same: the Church as a living and structured community, whose identity is found in sharing in Christ’s ministry in a rich variety of ways.
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- Copyright © 1993 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 In particular, Lay People in the Church. (Enlarged version London 1964)Google Scholar.
2 See Ministères et communion écclesiale. (Paris 1971); pp 10–11, and, in English Priest and Layman, pp 259–261 London 1967Google Scholar.
3 It is Vatican II that talks of the “properly secular” nature of lay life, LG 31.
4 The official line appears to be that lay ministers as such do not exist, although accepting that, if absolutely necessary, certain lay people can be entrusted with pastoral tasks (See John Paul II's Christifideles Laici). The biggest fault with this approach is, to my mind, its failure to deal with the reality of what lay people are doing.
5 Notable among the thinkers are Congar, and Gerard Philips for their theologies of laity; as well as those scholars, such as E Mersch, who re‐asserted the sense of the Church as Mystical Body in the decades before the Council.
6 For example, see K Macnamara's introductory essays to his Vatican II: the Constitution on the Church. London 1968. The observation is thoroughly investigated by Acerbi, A, Due ecclesiologie: ecclesiologica giuridica ed ecclesiologie commune nella “lumen gentium“. (Bologna 1975)Google Scholar.
7 This seems to me to be the position implied in Edmund Hill's book. Ministry and Authority in the Catholic Church. (London 1988)Google Scholar, in which he opposes a “magisterial papalist” view with a “ministerial collegialist” understanding. He recognises the presence of both in the Council texts; but for him this tension is something to be solved, about which sides must be taken.
8 My reasons for such an approach are both theological and sociological. Theologically the authoritative nature of the texts have a unified claim on us which mitigates against a selective reading; sociologically, as I will point out later, it appears that the two major traditions are significant in witnessing to two equally essential aspects of real Church life.
9 Apostolicam Actuositatem 2–3; Lumen Gentium 30.
10 AA 3
11 LG 12
12 LG 10
13 LG 34
14 LG 10
15 LG 35
16 The distinction made here is not meant to imply antithesis; rather, to witness to the various ways the one Spirit works within the Church.
17 LG 21
18 LG 22
19 LG 36
20 I would particularly note here the work of Schillebeeckx and, and the post‐conciliar writings of Congar in the area.
21 Kung, Hans Structures of the Church. (London 1965)Google Scholar. Rather different is Suenens, L Coresponsibility in the Church. (London 1968)Google Scholar which, again, aims to give practical expression to the Council's ecclesiology.
22 Carrouges, M Le Laical Mythe at realite. (Paris 1964)Google Scholar
23 K Rahner Theological Investigations vol. II (1963).
24 See Congar in Priest and Layman pp 301 ff; and Philips Achieving Christian Maturity (1967) pp 177 ff.
25 Clergy Review Feb. 1977.